“Dr. Tselikas believes that although the handwriting of the Clement letter is consistent with that of the 18th-century it does not match the handwriting of any other scribe at the Mar Saba monastery, and he believes that the letter is a forged imitation of 18th century Greek script made by Smith using four 18th-century manuscripts from the Thematon monastery of the Greek island of Cephalonia as a model for the handwriting. According to Tselikas, the handwriting of these four Cephalonia manuscripts which Smith had seen and catalogued while visiting Greece in 1951, is similar to the hand of Clement letter. At the very least, here lies a theory which can be tested against known facts.

Pantuck continues:

“A fundamental question at the heart of Tselikas’ hypothesis is whether Smith photographed the Cephalonia manuscripts in order to later study and develop the necessary fluency to copy the scribal hand in order to forge the Clement letter.”

But although Smith took more than 5,000 photographs of manuscripts in Greece during his travels in 1951 and 1952, he did not photograph any of the four manuscripts on which Tselikas builds his case. Pantuck gives three reasons to why we can be sure of this.

1) They are not among those manuscripts that are marked as being photographed in Smith’s publication Notes on collections of manuscripts in Greece.

2) They are not listed in the Brown University library catalogue list. Smith deposited in that library the photographs and the negatives from his 1951/52-tour.

3) They are not listed in Smith’s own catalogue list, which apart from containing the information in the Brown University-list, also lists the photographs and negatives that Smith were to send back to Greece after he had studied them.

Smith accordingly did not take any photographs of the manuscripts which Tselikas thinks form the basis for Smith’s handwriting imitation when forging the Clement letter:

“We can also assume that Morton Smith between his first and second trip to the monastery, wrote the text under the model of the manuscripts of Themata monastery, but also of other which he had seen and had photographed during his visit to Greece.” (Agamemnon Tselikas, D. TEXTOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS)

It could be said, although Pantuck never mentions this, that Tselikas also suggested that Smith would have learned how to make 18th century ink by copying two recipes found in two of those manuscripts:

“The first page containing the recipe of the preparation of ink in the manuscript 3 of Themata manuscript”

“The second page containing the recipe of the preparation of ink in the manuscript 3 of Themata manuscript” (Anexe 2. Recipe of Ink)

But if Smith did not photograph these manuscripts, he of course nor had access to the ink recipes.

Pantuck then goes on to say “that the handwriting of the four Cephalonia manuscripts itself does not actually appear to be particularly similar to the handwriting of the Clement letter.” This was one thing that immediately struck me when I first heard of Tselikas’ theory long before he published it. The writing was not particularly similar to the handwriting of MS65 where the Clement letter is found. Since then and through the efforts of Stephan Huller I have seen much Greek 18th century handwriting which for certain more resembles the handwriting of the Clement letter than the Cephalonia manuscripts handwriting does. Pantuck presents a few examples and summarizes this by saying:

“With even such a limited comparison, it is clear that these are four different hands and that the handwriting in the Cephalonia manuscripts is not even as similar to the Clement letter as the completely unrelated handwriting from Zagora”

Agamemnon Tselikas

Maybe it was due to the fact that Pantuck dared to question Tselikas’ expertise on the handwriting that Tselikas felt offended. I do not know. But he anyway responded to Hershel Shanks:

“I read the article you sent me about the criticism made by Dr. Alan Pantuck of my report on the manuscript of Clement. I have only one remark: that Dr. Pantuck restricts his criticism only to one section, while not taking into account either the textological observations or the facts on the presence of the Ignatius edition in the library of Mar Saba. I respect the opinion of anybody, but I do not proceed to such personal criticism. Anyone who has a critical ability must have his opinion itself without any influence. I’ve written previously to you that without any bias I did my research on this topic. I spent much of my precious time for many days and many dozen of hours, here in Athens and in Jerusalem, to contribute my scientific experience and means in order to enlighten the issue. The resulting comments and opinion I exposed in my report. Of course some agree or disagree. But most certainly I have no interest in the opinion of those who, without scientific basis and method, write several non-existent and fantastic things in their blogs. To me these are parasites of real and true science.” (Agamemnon Tselikas: Response to Allan J. Pantuck)

I must say that I am amazed at Tselikas’ reaction. This reaction must be due to the fact that Pantuck wonders why Tselikas suggests that Smith would have imitated the handwriting found in those manuscripts, when in fact they are not particularly similar to the handwriting of the Clement letter? Since they are precisely the four manuscripts on which Tselikas himself published in 1982, “Tselikas’ theory of imitation appears to be dictated by the desire to connect the Clement letter to manuscripts that Smith is known to have seen.” To build one’s “opinions of historical possibility” is according to Pantuck not a correct scientific method. Instead we should rely on “verified historical evidence”.

That Pantuck was “not taking into account either the textological observations or the facts on the presence of the Ignatius edition in the library of Mar Saba”, does of course not reduce the strength of his criticism founded on facts regarding one or two of Tselikas’ major arguments. That is the way real and true science work. You focus on a particular subject and then investigate that subject. As it now turns out, we can be fairly certain that Smith did not have access to photographs of the very manuscripts Tselikas argue form the basis for Smith’s imitation of Greek handwriting and it is also obvious that there is no particular manuscript we know of which has served as a model for imitation.

When Stephen Carlson published his book The Gospel Hoax in 2005, it was said to be the ”Smoking Gun”, which not only would prove that Clement’s letter to Theodoros, containing excerpts from an otherwise unknown longer version of the Gospel of Mark was a forgery, but also that Morton Smith was the forger. Since then we have come a long way and most, if not every single, argument presented by Carlson has been refuted. In his Apocryphicity blog, Tony Burke gives his Reflections on the Secret Mark Symposium, part 2, and then writes the following regarding Charles Hedrick’s speech:

“Hedrick also dismisses Stephen Carlson’s arguments as “less-than-circumstantial evidence”—indeed, very little of Carlson’s evidence, which has been effectively countered by Scott Brown, Allan Pantuck, and Roger Viklund, was discussed during the day, and it seems to have been abandoned even by those who argue against the text’s authenticity.”

The thing that strikes me the most is the fact that Carlson’s arguments, which were the arguments said to beyond any reasonable doubt prove that the letter was a forgery, now has “has been effectively countered”, and that to an extent that “it seems to have been abandoned even by those who argue against the text’s authenticity”. Yet, there is still no change in the opinion among the forgery advocators. Although all the previous arguments which were considered to be the strongest have been refuted and abandoned, they have just been replaced with new arguments, or to be more precise, with some of the same arguments rehashed. It seems like the hub around which everything turns is that the letter is a forgery and that Smith forged it. Every single clue leading in this direction, no matter how small a spot of, is used in order to show that Smith forged the text. And when those arguments are demolished one by one, they are just replaced by yet other weak proposals that Smith forged it anyway.

Burke tells us about Charles Hedrick’s paper:

“As part of his paper, Hedrick discusses the statement on the text issued by paleographer Agamemnon Tselikas and some reflections on an interview Hedrick conducted with Tselikas. What is striking about Tselikas’ comments is that they seem at variance with even the evidence he cites—i.e., the text was written in an 18th-century Greek hand, which could not be executed by Smith himself, yet Smith is identified as the forger, having brought the manuscript from another monastery during his travels in Greece as a secret agent working for the US and/or Britain (!).”

This is also a striking example of the same method. The “text was written in an 18th-century Greek hand, which could not be executed by Smith himself, yet Smith is identified as the forger.” I mean, Anastasopoulou’s verdict strongly suggest that Smith could not have written the text himself. This was apparently further strengthened by Allan Pantuck on the conference. In Report on Secret Gospel of Mark Symposium Pt 3, Ryan Wettlaufer summarizes Allan Pantuck’s speech, where …

“he wanted to show how Smith’s life would have left him ill-equipped to create a forgery like sm. For example, Pantuck showed several personal letters wherein Smith lamented his poor Greek skills. He confirmed this with personal writings of other scholars who commented on Smith’s poor Greek skills. These poor skills, Pantuck argued, mean that Smith could not have had the ability to compose a fake letter of Clement.”

Under normal circumstances, one would think that this would lead to at least some consideration among the forgery proponents. But not really. Instead some seem to say that if Smith did not write the text in his own hand he must have had a collaborator – because, as you know, he still must have been the forger. This is how Burke summarizes the present opinion based on Anastasopoulou’s report:

“Her conclusions seem to be universally accepted; no-one at the symposium seems to claim now that Smith personally wrote the text. Even Tselikas agrees with this assessment, believing that Smith had someone from another monastery write it for him.”

But then, who would have composed the text? If Smith did not have the ability to write in a fluid Greek 18th century style, which Anastasopoulou has convincingly shown, and if Smith had such “poor Greek skills”, which both Smith and his colleagues according to Pantuck confirmed – who then composed the letter? Smith not only had insufficient training for writing in this elaborated hand, his skills were not good enough in order to compose the Greek text. It is a huge difference between being able to fairly good read a language and to be able to compose a letter imitating the style of an ancient writer who had Greek as his native language. If Smith would have had a collaborator then this person not only would have had to be excellently skilled in writing this difficult 18th century Greek handwriting, he (or she) would also have had to compose the actual text of Clement (and of Mark). If your skills in Greek are poor, then it is almost a superhuman task to imitate a letter of Clement. I am sure it is no problem for anyone with English as their native language to realize that I do not have English as my native language. So we then end up with a collaborator of Smith who not only wrote the actual text but also must have composed the letter. And if so, what need is there for Smith at all?

And if it is not a modern forgery, then at least it should be an ancient forgery, some argue. Hedrick’s reply to this was interesting. He referred to the endings later made (but not that much later) to the Gospel of Mark (16:9–20), and said that they …

“are not particularly ‘Markan’ in style, so perhaps ‘Mark later emended his own text—just as Clement said!’”

I was also pleased to notice that Burke makes the same objection as I do on Craig Evans’ dishonesty when presenting the material. Burke says the following about Evans’ presentation:

“He writes that in the gospel ‘Jesus teaches a naked young man’ (but the youth is not naked) and later ‘Jesus in the nude instructs a young convert’ (nor is Jesus nude). Such flustering over a ‘gay Jesus’ is reminiscent of the controversy over Tinky-winky, the gay Teletubbie, and the unsavoury relationship between Spongebob and Patrick. These all seem to reflect the anxieties of the viewer/reader and have little basis in reality. Evans also notes along the way some other dubious arguments for forgery: the presence of mildew and mold spots on the manuscript (all we have are photographs; the nature of these “spots” cannot be determined), the forger’s tremor (which is not apparent in the better photographs), and Carlson’s report from a professional handwriting expert (which has been shown to have been edited to strengthen his position).”

I consider Evans to be very ill-informed on this subject, and he actually does not work as a scholar in this area as he is presenting outright falsehoods and also continues to put forward arguments that already have been shown to be faulty. I cannot see how he by now could be ignorant of this, and the only conclusion that can be made from this is that he is using the arguments for apologetic reasons only.

Burke tells us that he “had no firm view about Secret Mark’s authenticity” when he went to the symposium:

“Now that the symposium has concluded, I am convinced Smith did not create the text; rather, he found it at Mar Saba exactly as he claimed.”

He also reports on the audience’s opinion:

“By the end of the morning, the argument for forgery seemed to be convincing many of the audience members at the symposium. The coincidences that were unsettling Evans were unsettling others also. But the afternoon session included a paper that swung opinion toward authenticity, and convinced me once and for all that Smith did not, indeed could not, have forged the text.”

Below I will present a new piece of information on Hunter, so don’t miss it!

Francis Watson

Poisoning the well – that seems to be the tactic among at least some of the Secret Mark forgery proponents. When there really are no arguments left for forgery and especially one done by Morton Smith, the tactic seems to be just to throw suspicion on Morton Smith. This was my impression after having read Francis Watson’s (I would not call it an article) latest contribution Beyond Reasonable Doubt: A Response to Allan J. Pantuck in BAR, where he very poorly defended his position when challenged by Allan Pantuck (Solving the Mysterion of Morton Smith and the Secret Gospel of Mark). It actually looked like he had no defense for the arguments he had rehashed from for instance Stephen Carlson. Still his ”hope and expectation is that it will be increasingly ignored by scholars”; which is a way of poisoning the well.

It just is not enough to say that Pantuck’s response “does not amount to much” because Jesus was “teaching the mystery of the kingdom of God, even though the nocturnal setting and the partial or complete nudity of the two male participants hint at ‘rites’ of a strictly private nature.”This is no real defense for his position as no one in the preserved Secret Mark text is said to be nude, and it is just a way to hint at Morton Smith’s unproven homosexuality and even more unproven linger to destroy Christianity by inventing a clever gay party with Jesus and the youth. This is just a way to poison the well and to maintain your position without any factual evidence. It just is not enough to say that “my argument does not assert or require a total continuity between Smith’s views pre- and post-discovery”.

What has happened, and what some like Peter Jeffery has already noticed, is that there is a turning of the tide and a shift in position. When Carlson published his book The Gospel Hoax in 2005, many people seem to have been convinced that it now was proven that the letter was a forgery and that Morton Smith did it. Now, I do not know how many were convinced, but at least those shouting out the loudest were convinced. In time, however, Carlson’s arguments were demolished one by one by especially Scott Brown and later by Allan Pantuck, and Carlson decided to withdraw from the scene without even saying goodbye. Still his arguments were recycled although they in reality already had been as thoroughly refuted as one can expect, when they often were not based on any actual evidence but just possibilities in order to throw suspicion on Smith. How can you refute insinuations?

There has been a shift in position and now the forgery proponents are on the defense, trying to defend their suspicion-throwing, still without any evidence to back it up. That is probably the reason for Watson’s lame attempt to defend his position. He has nothing to back it up with.

And then there was the Secret Mark conference in Toronto this weekend, which I of course could not attend on the other side of the globe (see: York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series). So I will only refer to what I have heard and been told and also has read about. Apparently, according to Allan Pantuck in a private e-mail, my work on the forger’s tremor was discussed very favorably by Tony Burke and others, which pleases me. After all, I did make a small contribution in destroying the one “evidence” which seemed to be objective, based on some sort of controllable fact; the one evidence which was found most convincing by most people (also by me). (See: Tremors, or Just an Optical Illusion? and Reclaiming Clement’s Letter to Theodoros) It all just came down to Stephan Carlson having been misled by using printed screened images instead of real photographs (or at least scanned photographs) and thereby seeing tremors which only were the result of the images being screened for the printing process.

At the conference Allan Pantuck in a paper made a reply to Craig Evans’ original talk; a paper I have read. The two issues in Evans’ talk which Pantuck responded to were basically the same as the ones discussed by Watson so I won’t bother you with this once again. I have already expressed my doubts concerning Evans’ ignorance of this subject (One Thousand and One Untruths). Evans is rehashing what Watson was rehashing from Carlson which he was rehashing from others. Morton Smith read a spy novel by James Hunter and decided to imitate some of the plot and some of its wording and make a similar forgery as the one presented in the book; then go to the Mar Saba monastery and plant it there in order to destroy Christianity. I have written on this on several occasions (see for instance: Allan J. Pantuck on the Secret Gospel of Mark) and find the ideas to be extremely incomprehensible.

But Pantuck presents a new piece of evidence. James Hogg Hunter actually went to Mar Saba himself. Pantuck has spoken to Hunter’s son and he told him that his father went to the monastery in 1931. The son had read the 1931 tour material which said that James Hunter in the early morning hours …

“set out from Jerusalem on a donkey with a special permit obtained from the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem. Carrying food and water into the desert his small party journeyed through the valley of Hennon – the Gehenna of the New Testament, then through the valley of Fire, and three hours later came to the [Mar Saba] monastery founded by Euthyarius in 474 AD.” (Allan J. Pantuck in his reply to Evans, p. 11)

Of course this makes the proposed parallels even more understandable. It would come as no surprise that when dealing with the same subject, and when the events took place at same site, there will be some generic parallels. But if the author of the novel also visited the same places as the discoverer of the manuscript did, then of course the chances of even more direct parallels further increases. Both Smith and Hunter must have been riding the same path through the valley, seeing the monastery in a similar light from a similar angle. Talking to the monks and learning of the history of the monastery with all its legends. And one of the most important issues is of course ancient manuscripts and all the inciting stories of rare manuscripts, hidden in caves in order to save them for posterity.

If Hunter then later came up with the idea to write a novel where some of the action takes place at Mar Saba and Smith later visits the same monastery and eventually will make an astounding discovery there, the chances that they both will refer to the issues of Mar Saba in a similar way seems to be quite high. They must have seen the same things, heard the same stories and learned the same things. If I go to Paris and report of the surrounding of the Eifel tower, there is a good chance that it at least superficially will resemble the reports given by other people who also have been to Paris.

“While discussion of the Secret Gospel will no doubt continue, my hope and expectation is that it will be increasingly ignored by scholars who fear, with good reason, that their work will be corrupted by association with it.”

Maybe Watson meant to say that the Mar Saba letter for certain is a forgery and that he therefore is hoping that no one would be wasting efforts on interpreting a forgery. But the sheer lack of evidence presented by Watson in favour of the letter being forged and his total confidence that so also is the case, speaks against such an interpretation. Instead Watsons sets out from the expectation that we should ignore Secret Mark and that it is a fact that Morton Smith made it up; and from this conviction he tries to support his view.

Allan Pantuck choose to refute just two of the many arguments Watson presented in his fundamental paper; the ones that Hershel Shanks, the editor of BAR, found most persuasive. That is the parallels between Smith’s discovery and the plot in James Hogg Hunter’s novel The Mystery of Mar Saba, and Watson’s assumption that Morton Smith made an idiosyncratic analysis of the Gospel of Mark in which he laid out arguments that according to Watson also was confirmed by Smith’s discovery of The Secret Gospel of Mark.

Watson claims that Pantuck’s isolating of “two of the more accessible bits of this argument, and then speculating on the probability or otherwise of striking coincidences, does little to further the debate”. He believes “that Morton Smith’s authorship can be established ‘beyond reasonable doubt’” only if all of his arguments are “considered in full”.

This is a very strange way of arguing. Of course it is legitimate to refute individual arguments within a complex of many more arguments. And why would the full consideration of every argument show that Watson is right, if it can be shown that the individual arguments he presents cannot withhold a critical examination? In fact Watson presented very few new facts in his paper. Most of what he presented was the same old arguments already laid out by others, such as Stephen Carlson; and many of those has already been refuted. Just because Watson rehashed some of those and made them even more improbable, does not mean that they were new.

For example, Watson presents parallels between the Secret Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Mark and claims that the pericope thereby “would seem to be the work of an author determined to pattern his own work on mainly Markan phraseology.” But he does not even suggest the most obvious explanation; that the phraseology was Markan BECAUSE it was written by the same person who also wrote the Gospel of Mark. In The pastiche forgery of Secret Mark, as presented by Francis Watson, I showed that I could find even closer parallels in the Gospel of Mark to the parallels presented by Watson than he himself could find to the Secret Gospel of Mark. Of course you will find parallels to a certain writer if in fact he is the writer. In any normal circumstances a close parallel between a text and the genuine writing of a certain author is an indication that this author also is the author of the text. But this is not the case when it comes to the Mar Saba letter, because it has to be a forgery, and therefore also the things which indicates that it is genuine is used to argue that it is a forgery. Stephan Huller has repeatedly noted on his blog the same thing when it comes to the writing of Clement; that although everything is typical of Clement, it is nevertheless interpreted as a clever forgery by those who so badly wants it to be a forgery.

Pantuck objected to Watson’s claim that in the Mar Saba letter does Smith’s earlier view finds its confirmation, by showing that Smith’s view actually changed by his discovery. Watson agrees that there “is indeed a shift of emphasis at this point” but he retorts by saying that it “does not amount to much”:

“For one thing, the Secret Gospel still has Jesus teaching the mystery of the kingdom of God, even though the nocturnal setting and the partial or complete nudity of the two male participants hint at “rites” of a strictly private nature.”

Now, I have no great expectations for the forgery-proponents when it comes to making solid arguments for their case. But I become a bit surprised when someone is actually not telling the truth. What on earth does Watson suggest when he writes: “the partial or complete nudity of the two male participants”? Let me quote the actual passage from the Secret Gospel of Mark:

“And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.”

Without any restrictions, Watson says that both Jesus and the youth are either partially or completely nude. Let us begin with Jesus. Where is it said that Jesus was either partially or completely nude? It is said that Jesus taught the youth the mystery of the kingdom of God, probably during the night. But nothing is said about Jesus taking off his clothes. What about the youth then? Is it said that he is naked? Not at all, only that he just wears a linen cloth. Does this mean that he is partially naked? Of course not. It is suggested that the linen cloth coved the entire body, and thereby you are neither partially, nor totally naked. This clearly untrue statement by Watson is really poor scholarship. How can you argue with someone who is not paying regards to the facts?

Watson’s first objection is obviously nothing to pay attention to. What about his second objection?

“In addition, my argument does not assert or require a total continuity between Smith’s views pre- and post-discovery, only a high degree of continuity. The full force of this point is only evident if one grasps how unusual Smith’s esotericism is within the context of New Testament scholarship in the 1950s and indeed today.”

Okey, but Pantuck’s objection was that Smith changed his opinion on this matter after the discovery. To this Watson gives no reply apart from saying that Pantuck’s objection “does not amount to much” and then he says that his argument does only assert or require “a high degree of continuity”. This of course is no objection at all and Pantuck’s argument is still valid.

The second subject is the alleged parallels to Hunter’s novel. Interestingly, Watson presents another parallel in order to show that “coincidences do happen in real life”. He then makes up a story of a hypothetical novel written in c. 1895 before the “Piltdown Man hoax of 1912”. Watson obviously suggests this to be a better parallel to Morton Smith’s discovery and that this example therefore would be refuting Pantuck’s parallels. I must say that I find it difficult to follow Watson’s logic. How can you prove something by MAKING UP a parallel and showing this to be similar to an actual incident? I would for sure have preferred a parable by Jesus.

The Hunter novel parallel is really stupid. If you only think for yourself, it is so plain meaningless. How on earth can one believe that Morton Smith would have modeled a forgery upon the plot in a spy novel? Of course you can model a novel upon an actual event. It is just to make up that story. But if you are imitating a novel, you also need to act like the novel, such as searching and be given access to the library at Mar Saba in order to plant the forgery; and like Watson claims, also express yourself in similar terms when you describe how you made your discovery.

And so it finally came out. Having had the privilege of reading Allan Pantuck’s latest article in advance, I have been eagerly waiting for it to be published in Biblical Archaeology Review. Pantuck makes no great fuzz, but his arguments are very persuasive.

The article is mainly a response to two of Francis Watson’s arguments in his article Beyond Suspicion: On the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark, JTS 61 (2010); and then the two arguments which Hershel Shanks “appears to have found most persuasive”.

In the first part of the article, Pantuck deals with Watson’s assumption that Morton Smith made an idiosyncratic analysis of the Gospel of Mark in which he laid out arguments that according to Watson also was confirmed by Smith’s discovery of The Secret Gospel of Mark. In the second part Pantuck deals with the purported similarities between Smith’s discovery of Clement’s letter to Theodoros and the plot in James H. Hunter’s 1940-novel The Mystery of Mar Saba.

The analysis of the Gospel of Mark

In The Secret Gospel of Mark Jesus is said to have taught the youth the “mystery of the kingdom of God”. In the years before his discovery, Smith made some exegesis on Mark 4:11, where Jesus says that also his disciples had “been given the mystery of the kingdom of God”. Pantuck writes:

“While Watson acknowledges that there would be nothing unusual in finding some points of continuity between Smith’s prior views and his later interpretation of the Secret Gospel, he finds a scenario where these views themselves coincide so closely to the contents of the letter as to be suspicious. However, he does not consider how one should view significant discontinuities between Smith’s pre-discovery views, the contents of the letter, and Smith’s subsequent post-discovery interpretation. Yet, contra Watson, it is such discontinuities that we in fact find, lending support to the notion that Smith’s discovery led him to reevaluate and alter his prior views in significant ways.”

Pantuck shows that prior to Smith’s discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark, Smith held to the opinion that the word mysterion in the context of Mark 4:11 meant that Jesus was teaching in secret, and therefore “the mysterion of the kingdom of God concerned secret teachings and not secret rites.” But after Smith made the discovery he also changed his opinion in this matter and instead claimed that the opinion “that mysterion can never mean ‘secret rite,’ was ‘false’ and, in one aspect, ‘incredible.’”

Further Pantuck deals with Smith’s view on the relation between the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John. Watson claims that Smith was of the opinion that parts from John and Mark 2:1–3:6 “may derive from a common source.” But according to Pantuck Smith instead showed in detail, that “they completely lack Johannine traits.” But after his discovery, Smith thought that there was a common Aramaic source behind the two gospels. In fact it was only in 1963, after three years of frequent discussions with Cyril Richardson, that Smith changed his understanding and came to the conclusion that there probably was a common source behind John and Mark.

Both of these two examples show that Smith changed his opinion on fundamental issues due to his discovery, and such turning of the tide is far more persuasive in order to establish authenticity, than any number of superficial similarities between Smith’s prior views and his later interpretation of the Secret Gospel of Mark are to establish forgery.

James Hogg Hunter’s novel The Mystery of Mar Saba

I guess that not many of today’s advocators of pro and con forgery, actually have read The Mystery of Mar Saba by Hunter. Perhaps if they did, not so many would argue that Smith used the novel as a template to forge the letter; both its content and the way it was discovered. Many things can be held against such a fanciful idea, although it seems to have persuaded among others Francis Watson, Stephen Carlson and Robert M. Price. But Pantuck tackles the problem from a different perspective. Instead of putting too much effort into dealing directly with the similarities which Watson has elaborated upon, Pantuck lists a few examples of extraordinary similarities in other areas which for certain have happened by chance. If such extraordinary similarities can occur by chance, why would we not be able to come up with some similarities also regarding Smith’s discovery – Pantuck seems to say.

Pantuck gives a five examples. He compares Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, in which there is a shipwreck and four survivors are stuck in a boat. After a few days of hunger they killed and ate a cabin boy named Richard Parker. And forty years later there was an actual shipwreck with only four survivors stranded in an open boat and eventually three from the crew did kill and eat a cabin boy named Richard Parker.

Then there is Morgan Robertson’s novel Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan where a ship named the Titan sunk after hitting an iceberg. 14 years later Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in the same month and at the same place. The ships were both unsinkable, of almost equal size, and both had too few lifeboats.

Pantuck also finds another striking parallel to Smith’s discovery, but this time made by a certain Sophronius in the monastery of St. Catherine’s. Pantuck says that the “parallels here are more substantial than those Watson proposes”. But since this discovery was made in 1975, Smith could not really have imitated the story. And no one has suggested that Sophronius imitated Smith.

The fourth example deals with a letter written by an editor by the name of Clement Alexandre; a letter found by Pantuck in Morton Smith’s archives at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Pantuck asks himself:

“What are the odds that I should discover in a seminary library a previously unknown letter of Clement Alexandre requesting permission to publish the writings of Morton Smith”?

And the final example has to do with Pantuck searching the archives in order to find material regarding Morton Smith’s time at Brown University. He did for sure find a letter written by Morton Smith to the president of Brown University, but it was another Morton Smith, obviously “living in Providence, Rhode Island, at the same time”.

I have never been impressed by these forced parallels, perhaps because I have read the book and really thought the similarities were superficial. But Pantuck has in my opinion hit the Hunter novel parallel paradigm and sunk the Titanic.

My own take on this issue

Although Pantuck to some degree also makes a critical examination of some of Watson’s arguments concerning the similarities between the plot in the novel and the real discovery made by Smith, more can be said. And, for what it is worth, here is my take on this issue …

The similarities between Smith’s discovery and James Hogg Hunter’s novel from 1940 are purely imaginary similarities. The purported similarity between The Clement letter and Hunter’s novel is based on mathematically flawed statistics. You need to take into account every other novel that has been written before 1958, because if you start by looking for a novel with a content that resembles the Clement letter and its discovery, the chance of finding one that shares some similarities rapidly increases with the number of books you put into the calculation. I believe Alan Pantuck has shown this beyond any doubt. If you’re allowed to use the whole world literature with its vast number of novels counted in hundreds of thousand or perhaps millions, the chance of finding a novel which at least superficially resembles the discovery of Clement’s letter to Theodoros seems to be fairly high.

Further you have to take into account that both The Shred of Nicodemus (the text found in the novel) and Clement’s letter to Theodoros with extracts from the Secret Gospel of Mark are, and are relying upon, Gospel material, and therefore are bound to show similarities. Further the purported similarity that both are forgeries made at Mar Saba is not to be dealt with in a statistical analysis, since the suggestion that Clement’s letter to Theodoros actually is a forgery cannot be part of any parallels when in fact this very issue is the thing that is proposed and therefore the object of the investigation. If that is put into the calculation, it will be part of a circular reasoning. The question we should ask ourselves is if we were to take any event in modern history and tried to find a novel written before that event with a content that resembles it, would we likely come up with a parallel?

Francis Watson in the article, Beyond Suspicion: on the Authorship of the Mar Saba Letter and the Secret Gospel of Mark (JTS 61, 2010, 128-170), further elaborates on these purported similarities. After Francis Watson has summarized the plot of Hunter’s novel, he says: “Thus far, the parallel with Smith’s Mar Saba discovery is intriguing but inexact.” Yes, because the only real similarity he presents is the place of Mar Saba, where of course you could make a discovery of this magnitude and also a place you easily would chose in a novel for the same reason. And there is no similarity that both documents are forged (as he suggests), since we do not know that Clement’s letter to Theodoros is forged and as I said, one cannot simply assume that and use this as evidence when the actual issue is whether or not it is forged. If so it is a circular reasoning.

Then of course it was no secret that most manuscripts had been carried off to Jerusalem and that Morton Smith therefore would not have had any great expectations to make a major discovery. Watson writes that the “Nicodemus fragment and the letter to Theodore are discovered in similar circumstances narrated in similar language.” But what kinds of parallels are there really when Watson in Hunter’s novel finds that Sir William Bracebridge at a meeting back in London uses the word reconciled, while Smith wrote that he was reconciling himself; both to something negative, yet expressed differently? Really far-fetched! If you search for these kinds of similarities, you are bound to find some. Besides, there really are no “similar circumstances”.

Watson also claims that the “two Mar Saba discoveries are … similar in content.” To show this he says that in both cases a “short but sensational excerpt of an early text is discovered”. Now seriously, this is really generally expressed. What else could they find? In Smith’s case he did find many non-sensational finds and this one was the sensational one. Are we then to suppose that he forged it because of this? Or shall we believe that he was inspired by Hunter to produce a sensational text?

Further Watson claims that the discovery was made “together with a text or texts dating from the second century (manuscripts of Hermas and Barnabas, and of the letter to Theodore, respectively).” This is not entirely correct. It is (as far as I can see) never said in the novel that The Shepherd of Hermas and The Epistle of Barnabas are from the second century and as you probably all know, they could be from the first century. In the novel there are three separate documents, one for each book; and the third, The Shred of Nicodemus, is dated to the first century. This Shred of Nicodemus is never said to be “short” and is for sure no excerpt from a letter of Clement. So The Shred of Nicodemus is not short, not necessarily found together with a text or texts dating from the second century and there are separate documents found. The Mar Saba letter on the other hand is only one letter, with two short excerpts from Secret Mark and the letter could well have been written by Clement in the third century.

But the real problem lies in the causality. We are supposed to believe that Smith read a poor apologetic spy novel, got inspired to make a forgery in a similar fashion, which includes having a similar name as the Chief of the London police, Lord Moreton, a minor character being introduced late in the story, then started to study different fields in order to acquire the competence needed for the task. He then managed to get permission to visit Mar Saba, in spite of their restrictions, in order to plant his forgery. As I understand it Smith was given a special permission as a personal gesture to catalogue books at Mar Saba. What are the odds that someone being inspired by a novel to make a forgery at Mar Saba, also would get permission to examine manuscripts at Mar Saba? Because, one needs to assume that this was the causality in this context.

I would say that the only reasonable influence by the book on Smith, would be if he saw the title and came up with the idea to make a forgery and plant it at Mar Saba, as he was planning on going there anyway. But then he just as easily could have come up with that idea for a number of other reasons.

The following could possibly more be seen as a summary of what Rau writes, than as a proper review.

Eckhard Rau begins by saying that Stephen C. Carlson with his book has taken the controversy to a level where it is hard to distinguish fantasy and fiction from facts and exegesis.

Rau says that he is trying to walk a middle course. He says that he personally, on the condition that Secret Mark might be authentic, tries to explain to what extent Secret Mark can cast light on the cooperation and opposition between community Christianity and Christian Gnosticism in Alexandria in the 2nd Century.

Charles Hedrick

Rau refers to Charles Hedrick and the stalemate he depicted in his 2003 article. Rau does not think that this stalemate is overcome yet. He also confesses to the obvious, that as long as the original is not available, neither the falsification theory nor the authenticity theory is “provable”.

Rau goes on to give the background information of Morton Smith’s discovery at the Mar Saba monastery back in 1958, and how he presented his finding. Further he refers to the scholars who have visited the monastery and the Patriarch’s library in search for the Clement letter. He deals with Stroumsa’s report of his, David Flusser’s och Shlomo Pines’ visit in 1976, where they actually saw the manuscript themselves. He also mentions Thomas J. Talley’s, Charles W. Hedrick’s and Nikolaos Olympiou’s unavailing attempt to locate the Clement letter. He does not mention the visit by Willy Rordorf or by James H. Charlesworth and he is obviously unaware of Quentin Quesnell’s visit at the library in Jerusalem in 1983, when he also was allowed to take the leaves containing the letter to a “firm” and have them photographed. (See my Swedish blog post: Det undflyende Klemensbrevet)

Jacob Neusner

Rau then makes a survey of the critics of Smith and the letter. He deals with Jacob Neusner’s turnaround in regard to the authenticity of the letter. In 1973 Neusner wrote:

“The discovery itself ranks with Qumran and Nag Hammadi, Masada and the Cairo Geniza, but requires more learning and sheer erudition than all of these together, both in the recognition of what had been found, and in the interpretation and explanation of the meaning of the find“

Later Neusner charged Smith of forging the letter. Rau finds it odd that what Neusner in 1973 praises as a discovery which puts Qumran and Nag Hammadi in the shade, in 1994 has mutated into the greatest forgery of the century.

Next Rau deals with Quentin Quesnell. He writes that since Quesnell was so sharp and so dissociated, he probably also was totally convinced that Smith forged the letter.

Quesnell complains for not having access to the actual manuscript and that Smith did not se to it that the manuscript was made available for investigation. Rau wonders why Quesnell or others did not visit the monastery themselves if they were so keen on examining the manuscript? He also wonders why Stroumsa and Flusser so easily gave up, and did not try harder to have the ink and the paper properly examined.

Rau’s opinion is that if one makes a close examination, hardly any of Quesnell’s argument really passes. Quesnell’s main arguments according to Rau is:

Morton Smith

1) No one except Smith has seen the manuscript, which we now know is not true.

2) Bad photos; but this is no argument for a forgery.

3) The possibility to forge the letter by using Stählin’s concordance. This is also no argument for a forgery.

4) Smith held similar ideas as those put forward in the letter. But these similarities are according to Rau very farfetched.

Rau also has a second number 4. He says that the dedication in Smith’s popular version “for the one who knows” still is an unsolved riddle.

This dedication has been interpreted as a confirmation by Smith that he forged the letter and that the book was dedicated to the one who knows this.

If I may make a personal reflection; I do not think this is an unsolved riddle. Perhaps my memory fails me and someone already has suggested what I am about to suggest, but I cannot remember to have seen anyone propose the obvious solution.

Smith was for sure influenced by Gnosticism. How this actually manifested itself in Smith is something I do not know. But simply the fact that he was interested in Mysticism and Gnosticism ought to be enough to explain the expression “for the one who knows”. The Greek word gnosis (γνῶσις) of course means knowledge. When a Gnostic reaches gnosis (enlightenment) he literally receives knowledge about life and about himself. The Gnostic is “the one who knows” and it would be obvious for Smith to dedicate a book about secret knowledge to the one who knows, that is to the Gnostic.

Next in line is Andrew Criddle and his statistic evaluation of the letter; i.e. his evaluation of the ratio between the words Clement previously used only once and the words he never used. Rau confesses to know only a little about statistics, but wonders why the 0-words and the 1-words are that important? Why did not Criddle also examine the 2-words, 3-words, 4-words and 5-words?

Bart D. Ehrman

Rau then turns to Bart D. Ehrman. He notes that Ehrman is cautious and only expresses suspicion. That suspicion includes the fact that the Clement letter is inscribed in a book in which the forged letters of Ignatius for the first time have been excluded. According to Rau Ehrman’s suspicion still leads to a complex scenario. Either someone already has a copy of Vossius’ book from 1646, reads its last page and gets inspired to forge a Letter of Clement, which he then scribes into the book. Or this person has already decided to make a forgery, recalls what Vossius has written and searches and acquires an appropriate copy of the book. Rau considers both options to be too fantastic to be probable.

Next is Arthur Darby Nock who held the letter to be no earlier than from the fourth century and furthermore a “mystification for the sake of mystification”.

Robert M. Price

Rau also deals with Robert M. Price, who wrote that Smith “had a poisonous hatred for the Christian religion, especially for its historic homophobia.” Rau finds it far-fetched to think that Smith would have been persuaded to make a forgery by reading James H. Hunter’s novel, The Mystery of Mar Saba, or that Smith would have signed his own book with “Smith 65“. Rau says that Price is working through moral suspicion, by which a mix of homosexuality and crime arises; a mix that is so necessary for the detective novel. For that reason alone, Price’s contribution should, according to Rau, not be taken too seriously.

One can add to this that when I contacted Robert Price in December 2009 and pointed out the many errors in his review of both Stephen Carlson’s book and Scott Brown’s book, he told me: 1) The information I gave was more recent than his reviews. 2) He said that he hopes that I am right because “it would serve me better if the Secret Gospel were authentic!”

After that Rau goes on to ask: “Was spricht für eine Fälschung?“; i.e., what speaks in favour for the letter being a forgery? He says that most people never openly accused Smith for having forged the letter. They only pointed toward suspicious circumstances. He takes Ehrman as an example, who in his “Response to Charles Hedrick’s Stalemate” lists seven reasons to be suspicious. Rau says that Ehrman’s point of view does sound plausible, but loses its persuasive force as he only accounts for the doubt, and deprives us the arguments which could speak for authenticity.

According to Rau, the arguments in favour for Smith having forged the letter can be reduced to three points. 1) Smith has not provided the letter itself. 2) He has not explained who the ”one who knows” is. 3) The manuscript shows no sign of having a history of being copied many times. According to Rau the first two points lack any weight as evidence.

Rau then contiues: ”Was spricht für die Authentizität?“ He claims that there are five circumstances which point towards authenticity and against forgery, especially against Morton Smith having accomplished it.

2) The dedication in Smith’s scholarly book ”Clement of Alexandria”: “This book was written for Arthur Darby Nock and is dedicated to his memory”. Rau thinks that this is Smith’s way of paying reverence to a dead colleague who accused him of forgery. Rau believes that this speaks for authenticity and also that this has previously been overlooked.

3) Smith’s dedication for several years in investigating and writing an extensive scholarly commentary on the letter. According to Rau there seems to be no motives that are strong enough to have motivated Smith to do all this hard labour on his own forgery.

4) That the content of the first Secret Mark passage does not suit Smith’s theories and that his interpretation of it does not correspond to its content. If he would have forged it, he ought to have designed it more in line with his own views.

5) According to the letter, Secret Mark was a spiritual addition to a traditional Gospel, an otherwise unknown literary form. Forgers rather tend to follow a known pattern than to invent new forms of expression.

Rau again emphasises how little evidence that can be presented both in favour and against the authenticity of the letter. The aura of suspicion which he refers to and which he thinks has accompanied the fascinating finding already from the start, tend to attract everyone. This creates a risk that “proof” is produced.

As we cannot test the ink and the paper – and Rau fears that the letter is lost forever – we cannot know whether it is a forgery or an authentic letter. Still, according to Rau, we have the obligation to interpret the text as if it was an ancient Jesus tradition from where Clement lived.

In my blog post in Swedish Varför denna tystnad rörande Hemliga Markusevangeliet? (Why this silence on the Secret Gospel of Mark?) I conveyed this same view. If we can perform such an extensive exegesis on Q, which we have no external confirmation of, why should we not be able to do the same on Secret Mark?

Larry W. Hurtado

After this Rau turns to Stephen C. Carlson. This is by far is the most comprehensive section. Rau wonders whether one really needs to join in into the boundless enthusiasm of Larry W. Hurtado, who in the foreword of Carlson’s book The Gospel Hoax speaks of a “powerful punch“ against the authenticity of the letter, a punch which is “persuasive, decisive, practically unanswerable”. Rau does not think that one has to join in into this boundless enthusiasm.

This part is the most venomous part of Rau’s survey. After having dealt with Carlson’s methodology, he wonders if the ironical remarks he has made on Carlson’s methodology do Carlson justice? He says however that he is inclined to believe that the forger Carlson caught, only is a 21 century construction prompted by the imagination of a trained lawyer.

Rau then goes on to deal with the Swindler M. Bald. Strange enough, Rau does not refer to Brown’s and Pantuck’s article Morton Smith as M. Madiotes, which was published already in 2008. He only refers to Scott Brown’s report in Factualizing the Folklore that Allan Pantuck is about to publish two documents which will show that Carlson misattributed the top handwriting to M. Madiotes. Maybe Rau wrote this before 2010?

Being unaware of what Pantuck and Brown dealt with in the article, Rau lacks the decisive tools to fully uncover Carlson’s mistakes. Yet he manages to bring forth many insightful comments. Among others, he wonders how it could be that Stephen Carlson settled for examining the cropped image of MS22 (MS = manuscript) that Smith published. Why did the man who so forcefully insisted that we should look for the hard evidence, not come up with the idea of going to Jerusalem and himself examine the manuscript he put so much reliance in? I believe the question is more than justified, given the fact that because of this omission, Carlson made several crucial mistakes.

In spite of Rau’s unawareness about all this, he nevertheless makes many of the relevant critical observations, which I in my Swedish blog post Hur objektiva och analyserande är egentligen NT-forskare? (How unbiased and analytical are New Testament Scholars really?) claimed that many scholars did not make. For instance, Rau points to the obvious that most of the time Carlson only claimed to have seen signs of tremors etc. in the handwriting, while the small low-resolution images he published in his book did not have the quality or was large enough to make it possible to evaluate Carlson’s assertions.

Also I asked the same question and wondered how so many could be persuaded to believe in Carlson’s assertions that all these signs were in the text. Especially since they could not possibly have verified it themselves. As Carlson was not an authority, neither as a New Testament scholar, nor as a document examiner, they could not very well have relied on his authority. The only reasonable conclusion is therefore that Carlson’s conclusions were in line with what many wanted to be the truth, and that those who let themselves be persuaded by Carlson did so precisely because he claimed to have discovered what they deep down inside wanted to be the truth.

Rau continues with Morton Salt Goldsmith and all the clues Smith according to Carlson has left behind for us to discover. Rau admits that despite having repeatedly read about this, his mind boggles at the thought of all the unfathomable clues that Smith is said to have laid along the track for us to follow. Rau finds the Salt Goldsmith confession to be too fantastic in order to convince.

Rau also discusses Smiths alleged homosexuality, but I will not go into that swamp here.

In his summary Rau once again emphasizes, that only by examining the real document will we possibly be able to decide if the letter is authentic or not. There is really so little evidence that nothing can be said for certain:

It is probably so that one’s appreciation of a work differs depending on how well the author’s views are consistent with one’s own. I can only say that I very much appreciated Eckhard Rau’s Weder gefälscht noch authentisch?

“The discovery itself ranks with Qumran and Nag Hammadi, Masada and the Cairo Geniza, but requires more learning and sheer erudition than all of these together, both in the recognition of what had been found, and in the interpretation and explanation of the meaning of the find“

”In a subsequent email, he’s [Carlson] noted that Viklund’s photos don’t appear actually to be Hendrick’s published ones, but instead come from/via Scot Brown, and so are of unverified provenance. It’s not clear also whether they’ve been retouched or altered.”

Men än intressantare var ett yttrande han gjorde, där han sade:

”Are you aware that Carlson claims that the color photos are actually *lower* resolution, and not as sharp and clear as Smith’s own b&w ones?”

Roger Viklunds blogg

Bloggens innehåll

I will occasionally write in English as well, when I have something to say which I think could be of interest also for a wider audience. These posts can be found in ENGLISH POSTS in “Categories” below.